by Sarah N. Lynch and Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI said on Thursday it had hacked into cybercriminals grouped within “Hive”, an illicit organization specializing in internet extortion.
In a joint statement signed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, his deputy Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, U.S. authorities rejoice that they hacked into Hive’s network, put its members under surveillance, and stole their encryption keys.
“Using legal means, we hacked the hackers,” Lisa Monaco told reporters. “For Hive, the game has changed.”
The announcement of the site’s takedown was first disclosed by a banner posted on the home page of Hive’s website, stating: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized this site as part of coordinated law enforcement action against Hive Ransomware”.
This group is presented as one of the most active in the field of extortion on the internet. Its modus operandi was to encrypt a company’s data before demanding a ransom in exchange for a decryption key.
In a note released in November, the FBI estimated that more than 1,300 companies had been victims of Hive’s attacks and that approximately 100 million dollars (92 million euros) had been extorted.
(Raphael Satter and Sarah Lynch; French version Nicolas Delame)
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